How about simply charging and convicting those whose guns are used in crimes or inflict injury? By definition, if you let your gun fall into the hands of criminals or children, negligence has occured, you are responsible, and should be held accountable. But noooooo, gun advocates don’t want that kind of responsibility. They want the kind that doesn’t hold them accountable for anything. From what I have read here, gun advocates think responsible gun ownership ends at taking a class and paying your NRA dues on time.
And you will recieve the counter-arguement that an unloaded, unfireable weapon is useless in a self-defense encounter, Call Me Frank. Upon preview I see,
I must have missed those posts, could you direct me to them? And just FYI, the majority pro-gun who have posted in this thread are not dues paying NRA members.
Sure, just read Snakespirit’s post at the top of this page:
All of these cites talk about “responsible gun ownership”, but fail to define it beyond gun safety courses.
How would you know that?
Suppose we approach this from another direction. Please define irresponsible gun ownership, and tell how us irresponsible gun owners should be held accountable.
OK, I see now. Would it be in the ballpark to say that if I am a card carrying gun-owner, I am responsible for whatever happens with a firearm I owned? In addition to whatever laws I could be prosecuted for as SteveG1 pointed out earlier?
So, in the scenario I posited earlier, wherein a firearm I owned was stolen and used to commit murder, I am as culpable as the one who commited the crime? Is this your position?
Based on the number of gun debates in GD over the course of the last few years, most of the poster’s have identified themselves as NRA members or not. And most of us who are NRA members don’t consider it a slur.
Irresponsible gun ownership is not following safe handling procedures, unsafe shooting practices, buying and selling from/to individuals that may not pass an NCIS (subjective topic, of course), and unsafe storage practices.
No, you would not be prosecuted for murder, but you would be prosecuted for negligent gun storage, with a commensurate punishment, which would be established by the state legislature. A fine perhaps, something severe enough to provide a deterrent.
I see; and how should irresponsible gun owners be held accountable?
I was hoping you would say that. So if we all agree that an unloaded, unfireable weapon is useless in a self-defense encounter, and that the only reason for having a gun (barring hunting, but that’s another matter) is for self-defense, then we can avoid the hassle and just not have guns in the first place. 
I think a reasonable compromise would be that if you want to have a fireable weapon at the ready at all times, that it be kept in a safe of some sort. Sure, it will take you a little longer to get at it should you need it, but it will also make it impossible for some kid to get at it or for some thief to easily steal it.
Laying a gun out on the coffee table or sticking it in a shoe box in the closet do not strike me as adequate measures to ensure that one’s gun does not fall into the hands of someone who has no business with a firearm (IE, a kid or criminal).
Irresponsible gun owners do not adequately secure their guns.
This means either on their person, monitored, or in a gun safe.
If someone takes it from them or breaks into their gun safe, that is beyond their control.
I suggest YOU take a gun safety class instead of spouting off how inadeqyaute they are. Obviously, you have not done so. What do you think they teach? Shoot only liberals?
The only thing to fear is Fear Itself. Glad you chose an appropriate name.
In the spirit of attacking the post, and not the poster:
Your post requires a level of responsibility that would have reasonable people labeling you as a “kook.”
You would have parents responsible for the acts of their grown children, based on the standard you impose on firearms.
Go back to OZ. They need a replacement witch.
The “easily” qualifier becomes a useless weasel word, when the original position set forth on this subthread (by Fear Itself) says that you can store your gun in a way that makes Fort Knox look like a wet paper sack, but will still be held liable for “negligence” if somebody manages to get hold of it anyway.
It is hardly surprising that you don’t hear anybody, outside of the lunatic fringe, supporting a lunatic position. The boundaries of what is and is not a reasonable level of responsibility to expect are a bit grey at the edges, but extending them to this preposterous extreme is clearly precluded.
Blah, Blah, Blah. You have been reduced to toothless namecalling. I still have not seen any gun advocates give a definition of irresponsible gun ownership, and also detail how irresponsible gun owners should be held accountable. I challenged BF to do that, and he disappeared like Shoeless Joe into the cornfield; I suspect the rest of you will as well.
If any of you would like to step up to the plate, be my guest. Until then, I contend that “responsible gun ownership” is a meaningless platitude of the gun lobby, and gun advocates don’t want to be held accountable for anything.
Fear Itself, I’ll continue to debate regardless of your ad hominem attacks, and BTW, I don’t monitor the SDMB 24/7, so please excuse my tardiness in replying to your post.
There are laws on the books which deal with negligent use of firearms. In most states, children under 18 are not allowed to handle handguns without close adult supervision. In most states, children under 12 are not allowed to handle long guns without close adult supervision. If your 10 year old shoots his playmate with one of your guns, you should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law as proscribed.
Let me reiterate, in most states, evidence of irresponsible gun ownership as defined previously in this thread, is prosecutable.
Your claim that gun advocates don’t want to be accountable for anything is baseless. I recommend spending a little more time on some pro-gun sites, where you’ll find many discussions of safe and effective storage options, teaching safe gun handling to children and adults, and effective crime control. There are irresponsible gun owners in this country, just as there are people who drink and drive. Each should be treated as the law proscribes, without creating some sort of special category of “criminal”.
Unfortunately, that level of safety is relative. In addition, there is the problem of enforcement, if there is a state or federally mandated “level of storage requirement.”
What is the problem of enforcement? Do you believe it would be a drain on resources or an invasion of privacy?
Fear Itself, you may want to check thislink before taking that gun safety course…
Steve MB, I did not voice my support for unconditional liability regarding stolen guns or accidents regarding irresponsibly stored guns. I chimed in because I thought SnakeSpirit’s analogy was inaccurate.
That having been said, if you were to be held accountable for injuries caused by your firearm to a ridiculous degree*, what measures would you take to ensure that you were not criminally liable if your gun were stolen?
*IE, a thief breaks into your Fort Knox gun locker and shoots someone, you are criminally responsible as an accessory.
Now that having been said, I am not saying gun storage laws should be that draconian. It’s just an interesting hypothetical.
Exactly both. England’s mandatory registration/gun storage provisions work because they have 1.5 million registered shotguns owned by X amount of people. In the US, there are over 70 million gun owners who own over 250 million firearms. Second, the number of people that would balk at a government official dropping by unannounced to review/inspect ones storage setup would probably be near that number.
I heard about your link via a stupid news segment on my local radio station and laughed out loud. This quote “after accidentally shooting himself while trying to demonstrate gun safety” is a hoot. There are no accidental discharges, this should be classified as a negligent discharge. Which one(s) of the below were not followed by this dingbat? (emphasis mine)
RULE 1
ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED
The only exception to this occurs when one has a weapon in his hands and he has personally unloaded it for checking. As soon as he puts it down, Rule 1 applies again.
RULE 2
NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT PREPARED TO DESTROY
You may not wish to destroy it, but you must be clear in your mind that you are quite ready to if you let that muzzle cover the target. To allow a firearm to point at another human being is a deadly threat, and should always be treated as such.
RULE 3
KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER TIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET
This we call the Golden Rule because its violation is responsible for about 80 percent of the firearms disasters we read about.
RULE 4
BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET
You never shoot at anything until you have positively identified it. You never fire at a shadow, or a sound, or a suspected presence. You shoot only when you know absolutely what you are shooting at and what is beyond it.
An invasion of privacy - Am I to take it, then, that you believe many of the 70 million gun owners in the US would not trust the government to periodically/randomly inspect their gun storage method? That strikes me as rather ironic that they would not trust the government (what with it being democratically elected and essentially the corporeal form of the will of the people) to objectively enforce storage regulations while that same group of people would expect the rest of us to trust them (who are not democratically selected*) to properly store their firearms.
*Meaning, the people of a given state do not have much in the way of direct control over who may or may not purchase a firearm.
In this instance, I believe it is fair to compare firearm ownership to automobile ownership. When one reaches the age of 16, one can apply for a learner’s permit. To get that learner’s permit, you must show that you have the minimum knowledge the state deems necessary for you to begin operating a vehicle.
Upon securing your learner’s permit, you may then begin the process of learning to drive, in which someone who is either 21+ or your spouse will ride ‘co-pilot’ and teach you how to drive. If you are under 18, this process takes 6 months at a minimum, if over 18 it takes at least 2 weeks.
After the minimum period of time upon receiving your learner’s permit has passed and you feel confident enough to subject yourself to the road test, you make an appointment at your local DMV.
Now, a PennDOT (in the case of PA residents) employee will sit in the passenger seat of your car and instruct you to perform a series of maneuvers to test your competency to drive. If you succeed in completing these maneuvers, you are then issued your driver’s license.
After you’ve got your driver’s license, you are then subject to the regulations and enforcement methods regarding the operation of a vehicle in your state of residence. This may include random checkpoints. One might argue that random checkpoints are an invasion of privacy, that the police should not be allowed to pull you over and check your ID (while gauging your sobriety), but by applying for and receiving a driver’s license you have agreed to abide by the rules and regulations determined by your state - TS.
Now, let’s contrast that process with gun ownership.
When one reaches the ripe old age of 12 you can procure a Junior Resident Hunting license (which, I believe, requires the completion of a hunting safety coures). Upon procurement of this license you may now own (with adult supervision) your first rifle or shotgun.
When one reaches the age of 18, you can buy any firearm (legal to sell/own in PA) upon completion of a criminal background check. No mandatory waiting period, license, nor safety training.
Once you’ve turned 18 and bought your handgun you are subject to the rules and regulations regarding the ownership/use of a firearm, but you are not obligated to register your firearm nor are you obligated to store it with a safety-lock on (Your licensed dealer, however, must include a safety-lock with your firearm purchase, but there are no quality standards to insure that that safety-lock is effective). Furthermore, the state cannot randomly check to make sure that you employ the safety-lock when the firearm is not in use. I would argue that that is within the right of the state, as when you buy a firearm you are subjecting yourself to the rules and regulations regarding the ownership/use of them. Granted, you can interpret the second amendment to mean that all are guaranteed the right to own firearms, but you are not constitutionally guaranteed to do so devoid of governmental regulation.
It seems to me that a gun is easier to buy and use, in PA, than a car.
Admittedly, this is semantics (or rhetoric, if you prefer), but an accident is defined as:
As I recall from reading that article, the conditions under which the man was shot meet that definition. Now, it was an accident due to negligence to be sure, but an accident, nonetheless.
While I’m not challenging the validity of that statistic, I am simply curious as to the source.
Finally, in regards to the man-power issue - perhaps instead of guarding against terrorist attacks, a trained and licensed (or even elected) group of gun-owning civilians could be charged with conducting random safety standard enforcement. That strikes me as a reasonable compromise. Those who own firearms could have a say in who enforces relevant storage regulations (and they can already have a say in what those regulations are or are not), which should allay privacy concerns. Those who are concerned with existing storage regulations could be satisfied knowing that what storage regs there are are enforced and they can have a say in who enforces them.
Good post, Call Me Frank, I’ll get back to ya sometime this weekend.
There’s a big difference in unrestrained gun ownership and assuring that teachers are trained in their use. If anyone can go out and buy AK-47s and the like, there is no rational reason to believe that any of them are going to be trained in the safe use of their firearm.
Personally, though I have not campaigned for this, I would like to see a program where the government accredits private companies to provide training on using various classes of firearms (including safety, storage, legal issues, etc.), and then gun vendors (storefronts, gun shows, etc.) would be required to check for valid saftey certifications before being allowed to sell a gun. Yeah, there are some problems with it, but I would like to believe that having such a system in place would increase the awareness of the proper use of firearms.
It can also be safely said that not serving caviar in the cafeteria was not effective in stopping the shooting…
JOhn.
I would hazard a guess that the majority of Americans would not condone this, and general mistrust of the “government” seems to be an American birthright. We already have laws that deal with illegal search and seizure and court-ordered warrants with just cause. I don’t think you are going to convince a majority electorate at either the state or federal level to create a separate set of civil rights covering gun-owners only.
As it should be. The people of the state of California have elected leaders who have passed legislation severely restricting gun owners rights. In Vermont, it is the opposite. We do have criteria for persons who cannot possess or own a firearm at the federal level (from the BATF):
A person who -
[ul]
[1] Has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding 1 year;
[2] Is a fugitive from justice;
[3] Is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance;
[4] Has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to a mental institution;
[5] Is an alien illegally or unlawfully in the United states or an alien admitted to the United states under a nonimmigrant visa;
[6] Has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions;
[7] Having been a citizen of the United states, has renounced his or her citizenship;
[8] Is subject to a court order that restrains the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner; or
[9] Has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence cannot lawfully receive, possess, ship, or transport a firearm. A person who is under indictment or information for a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding 1 year cannot lawfully receive a firearm. Such person may continue to lawfully possess firearms obtained prior to the indictment or information. [18 U. S. C. 922( g) and (n), 27 CFR 178.32( a) and (b)]
[/ul]
And I agree with you, as would a majority of gun owners in that there should be some regulation of firearms, as partially evidenced in the above list. But I must disagree with you concerning the guns/car anology, as the former is a right and the latter is a privilege. If I may reiterate, most gun owners support firearms regulations which are proven crime control solutions. Most gun owners do not support firearms regulations which restrict their right to access without halting or slowing criminal activity. A case in point is the Assault Weapon Ban which expires Monday (yay!!).
I’m sorry, I’ve had that for so long I couldn’t even guess as to where I got it from.
Besides the cost involved, not just the human resources, we have now created another government bureaucracy that will monitor citizens on a regular basis? I don’t see the need, first of all, and secondly, that’s way too Big Brother for me.
You still didn’t address the irony that gun-owners are asking their fellow citizens to trust them with firearms while they themselves don’t trust their government to ensure that those firearms are handled in a safe manner.
Look at it this way, we elect our government officials while all citizen gun-owners (IE, not police officers, military personnel, etc.) are self-appointed. True, they must be legally eligible to own/buy a firearm, but those controls can be circumvented and barring that, it only stops past offenders from buying a firearm. Someone could have a clean crimninal record and could easily qualify to own a gun, this does not mean they are incapable of or unwilling to commit a crime with that gun, let alone are incapable of accidentally shooting someone (IE, they violate Rule 4).
As far as convicing a majority, I don’t think that’s entirely feasible either, but that’s not evidence that my ideas are inherently bad/unsafe/insufficient/grossly unconstitutional.
I didn’t verbalize that thought too well. What I meant is that if I don’t want John Doe to be governor of PA, I can vote against him in the election. If I don’t want Jon Smith owning an assault weapon, there’s nothing I can do. So, I have to trust Smith to be responsible while he doesn’t have to trust the government (which, if I have voted to support it, represents me) to be responsible in making sure he’s responsible.
The problem there is that it seems that that majority of gun owners whom you say support firearm regulations are only interested in supporting the firearm regulations they want (IE, they wish to self-regulate). If violation of Rule 3 results in 80% of gun accidents, shouldn’t those gun owners who support firearms regulations support removing the trigger assemblies of firearms so as to prevent that 80%?
One of the major rolls of our government is to regulate stuff - food safety, drug safety, automobile safety standards, product safety standards, etc (I’m only listing a few safety topics because they are more relevant to this debate than say weights and measures, or something like that). The reason the government regulates these safety-related things is because they are acting on behalf of the people to ensure that individuals, corporations, and everything in between exercise their rights safely. Once again, I say that it is well within the rights of the government to take preventative measures to ensure firearms are owned, stored, and operated safely.
Those are Jeff Cooper’s Four Rules of Gun Safety, which I couldn’t find any analyses upon (Once again - only a cursory search). But, the immediate problem I see with Rule 3’s statistic is that it lacks clarification. And even disregarding questions about the statistic’s derivation, that would still mean that 20% of firearm accidents happen when Rule 3 is obeyed. Finally, those are Jeff Cooper’s Four Rules of Gun Safety, not The ATF’s Four Laws of Gun Safety. Those rules do seem pretty good and if gun owners are largely willing to follow them, why don’t we codify them into some kind criminal or civil liability laws?
One could make the resources (both human and financial) argument about any regulatory agency that doesn’t exist, which doesn’t negate its necessity. For instance, if we didn’t have a police department one could argue how much it would cost to create and staff one, let alone equip it, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a police department.
That may be way too Big Brother for you, but allowing gun owners to be simply personally and not criminally/civilly responsible for practicing proper gun safety procedures is a little too Scary Neighbor for me.
Well, honest American citizens cannot go out and buy “AK-47s and the like;” however, criminals have been able to, can now, and forever will be able to go out and buy them. We can logically expect many of them to be well-trained, but not in what I’d call "safe use.
That is exactly the kind of program we have in place in Hawai’i. It hasn’t reduced firearm crime, but it has done exactly what you say. It is up to the states to do this, not the feds.
Personally, I support the idea, and so does the NRA and the HRA. Training is a very large part of the agenda of firearm enthusiest groups. Unfortunately, with all the distractions from having to defend our rights in the face of “cosmetic” gun bills (like the assault-weapons ban), it takes funds away from more productive uses of members’ donations.
It can also be safely said that not serving caviar in the cafeteria was not effective in stopping the shooting…
JOhn.
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